"I wonder how much has been discovered about Dungeons over the last thousand years."
Right now, Kyron and I are laying on the ground, relaxing. He's bare-chested again, and I'm resting with my head on his stomach and my hands on mine. He's got his left hand holding my hands, since that's the side I'm on, and is using his right hand to stroke my hair. This is a comfortable position, though we're going to have to stop soon since we're both at full Mana again.
"What do you mean?" Kyron asks.
"Well," I say. "For example, the shortcut – it seemed like I was the only person who knew about it. I did tell people, but how widespread do you think the knowledge of it and how to access it is? Or how to close a Dungeon entrance manually, instead of waiting for it to close on its own?"
With a thousand years having passed since just hours ago for us, there are plenty of things which might have changed or become discovered and common knowledge.
"I still want to know how you discovered the shortcut," Kyron says. "Seeing if there's a way to close the Dungeon's entrance? Sure, I can get you doing that. But seeing if there's a shortcut? I still can't figure out why you would do that, not with how the shortcut is used."
"I wasn't actually trying for a shortcut," I decide to let him in on this piece of information. "I was just curious if it was possible to turn off the void, and upon discovering that it was but the void was still there, decided to see what would happen if I jumped into it."
"That was a needlessly stupid risk."
"The void was off, so I was fairly certain I'd be fine," I tell him. "It was pretty fun, though I did nearly break my arm.
"… how many times did you do it before getting bored?"
"Twenty-eight."
Kyron snorts, then says it's time we get moving. We're taking longer to clear this than a few hours thanks to these rests, but also because we're going for more kills than a normal party would. Most wouldn't try to take on all four areas, either, but we aren't most. My husband and I both want to get stronger faster.
Even if we probably won't reach our old might in just a few hours or even a few weeks, we can still go for a decent boost with this Dungeon. By the time we leave this Dungeon, we'll be stronger than most people could ever hope to achieve. In fact, we already are.
The majority of people don't have Classes. Of those who do, few ever reach Level 25, much less advance a Class Tier, which requires a significantly higher Level than that. The number of people can come close to our might even after a thousand years of people being born with Classes and possibly higher-Tier ones can very likely be counted on the cumulative number of fingers and toes between Kyron and me.
And that's across the globe.
"So?" I say. "How common do you think stuff like that is? How much do you think they've discovered?"
"Well," he says. "They've probably confirmed the 'theory' you kept spreading that a Specialty Dungeon's form and features after it's completed the first time are based on all previous attempts of it."
The reason a Specialty Dungeon is Tier Invalid until it's completed is because it's a test. That's why neither of us were surprised that this one had all four elements in it, and in their own zones. By separating them out that way, the Dungeon can more accurately test abilities against those monsters. In the zones where two elemental areas meet, they do mix together a little, too. Kyron and I aren't going into those zones, but it doesn't matter because they don't affect the testing that much.
When developing the Specialty Dungeon's form after it's been completed, it looks at all runs performed. If everyone focused on going straight for the end of the Dungeon, then the Special Dungeon's form will focus on the opposite of that.
For this one, that would be water-based monsters and terrain, like what we did before this rest period.
Another factor into its form after the first clear is how strong the monsters were brought up to n each of the previous runs. Since it resets after a failure, just as Dungeons do after clears and fails, a new group going in will always start off at the most basic challenge for it.
In technicality, the starting Tier's strength is Tier 0 for a Specialty Dungeon's test mode. Every 5 Strength or Magic or Constitution a monster goes up, it increases by a Tier. Right now, Kyron and I are facing it at Tier IV, as we've killed enough monsters to boost them up to around 20 Strength, Constitution, and/or Magic.
If we went and finished the Dungeon right now, its form would be Tier V, the next one up.
Had several other groups attempted this before us, but all of them failed at its Tier 0 difficulty and then we defeated it at the Tier IV difficulty, the Specialty Dungeon would be lower than Tier IV but higher than Tier I. In other words, either Tier II or Tier III.
We're basically screwing over everyone else's ability to use this Dungeon unless they're a high Tier, themselves, but that's perfectly fine by me. This Dungeon was influenced into existence for us to get stronger, and that's exactly what we're using it for.
"I did tell enough people that," I say. "And there were enough people trying to study the Specialty Dungeons – and Dungeons in general. So yeah, that stuff is probably well-known."
"As for the entrance thing… I don't know," he says. "Most people didn't believe it unless you showed it to them. Most of those who did believe it, whether initially or after being shown, also believed it was heretical to close a Dungeon's entrance on your own. That it 'defied the natural order of things' to do so."
"Those people were stupid," I say. "Do you think they know about Dungeon Upgrades?"
"People knew about those already," he says.
"No, I mean the limit."
Dungeons can, over the course of time, eventually upgrade into a more powerful version of themselves. When the upgrade happens, it can be one, two, or three Tiers that it goes up. Despite all the stuff I know and have discovered in my nearly nineteen years of life, I haven't learned what causes them or if there's a limit to the upgrades.
"Possibly," Kyron says. "There's been another thousand years since the war that was only a few hours ago for us, Cay. That means another thousand years of people researching it. Presumably researching, anyway. I'd be surprised if they haven't found what causes them or the limit, if there is one."
"Fair," I nod. "Do you think anyone knows about the special thing with a Special Dungeon's test mode?"
The only person I ever revealed it to was Kyron, and he promised not to tell anyone. It's something pretty major and could very likely initiate wars over gaining access to a Specialty Dungeon before it's been cleared the first time.
"Considering how ridiculous you'd have to be to discover that," Kyron says. "I'd say that even a thousand years of studying Specialty Dungeons wouldn't be enough."
"Sweet!" I get up. "Let's go get stronger!"
"Hold on," he snorts. "Let me put my stuff back on first."
I wait for Kyron to finish, then we set off toward the western section of the Dungeon, to the air-affinity monsters. We face off more boars like the ones we battled upon our arrival here, as well as deer that use air magic to boost their speed, blades of compressed air whipping around their bodies and antlers to add additional danger to their charges.
When the terrain changes here, it becomes something most groups would likely simply turn around at. The ground is separated, gaps between the "islands" floating over the void. The gaps between them range anywhere from a couple of feet to several yards, and falling into the void would mean certain death – as long as one hasn't turned off the void.
Each of the islands is of varying size, with some as small as only a few feet on each side, and some up to a hundred feet at their widest or longest. With the varying sizes and gaps between them, one needs to carefully plan out their path as they travel, and be mindful as they fight.
Kyron and I don't have to worry about falling into the void, and not just because I turned it off, meaning we'll just get sent back to the Dungeon's entrance if we do fall in.
The normal way to deal with the voids – at least, in our era – was to have earth mages create bridges. Since Dungeons reset every time they're completed or failed, the bridges were always gone in future runs, but it also made returning to the main path easier.
I came up with a more simple solution, and that's what Kyron and I use here.
"Whoo, hoo!" I exclaim as I utilize the [Wind Step] spell to cross a sixty-foot-long gap between two of the islands.
The spell creates a powerful burst of wind underneath the foot I cast it under, the burst pushing in both directions. This gives me a boost through the air, and is not for people who haven't practiced using it over solid ground enough. Though it's a Tier III spell, it only costs 1 Mana.
Its higher Tier is because of the difficulty of actually casting it properly, the difficulty of using it, and the fact that it becomes Mana-intensive to actually utilize. Each [Wind Step] costs 1 Mana, and the distance it propels varies based on how much Magic the caster has. Or at least, the maximum distance. Kyron and I rarely use it to go more than a few extra feet at a time because it's easier to maintain control in shorter bursts.
"This is the real reason you wanted to wait until now to do this, isn't it?" Kyron asks as we land on the edge of the island we were heading for. "So that we'd have enough Mana to do this?"
"It took you that long to figure out?"
Kyron just groans before getting to work helping me kill the monsters on this island.
As the boars and deer reduce in frequency, snakes and birds increase. Some of the birds are smaller ones that just have [Enchant: Air] on their wings as they dive, but those are easily dispatched. [Stone Arrow] from me is more than enough in most cases, though I use [Stone Bolt] if they get too close, as I can shoot it with more accuracy and it's strong enough to do a fair bit of damage to their wings, even if they are fleshy instead of shelled.
For Kyron's fighting against the bird, he either waits for me to shoot one out of the sky or he uses [Stone Arc] to take them out. If a flock of birds comes our way, I use a [Stone Bomb] to take them on, because it's more Mana-efficient in most cases.
Some of the birds, however, are thunderbirds, and those are much more dangerous than the others. Dungeons rarely include babies or youth among their monsters, which means that we're only facing adult thunderbirds. In and out of Dungeons, they can be a pain in the ass or a terror for hunters and civilization alike.
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An adult thunderbird has a twenty-foot wingspan, and their body is massive enough to match. Their feathers are various shades of grey and they can blend into a cloudy sky, and some have yellow streaks in their feathers. Though they're called "thunderbird", their flight is extremely silent, air magic used to quiet the sounds of their flapping.
What makes them dangerous are the concussive waves of air they can create when they flap their wings – the origin of their name. The blasts are physical due to how powerful they are, and they create a sound akin to thunder. Any which have yellow in their feathers can also use lightning, though it looks like that's not being included in this Dungeon.
At least, not for this test version of it.
"Gotcha!" I manage to grab Kyron with the wind as he's thrown back from a thunderbird's attack. "Hey! No throwing wind at me!"
This is the first thunderbird that we're facing off against in this Dungeon, and it's going to set the tone for how we complete this area.
I thrust my other hand forward and send a blast of wind to counteract the concussive waves sent at me by the thunderbird. My counter isn't powerful enough to completely defeat the bird's attack, but it is powerful enough to reduce it down to just a strong wind.
Kyron is already sending a series of [Stone Arc]s at the thunderbird before he's even landed, and it shifts its attention back to him. Its blasts are strong enough to break the thin arcs of stone, but the arcs are strong enough to disrupt its blasts.
Experienced in fighting thunderbirds, Kyron and I know that if we can't simply overpower one, the best way to deal with it is to keep ourselves too spaced apart that it can't defend against both at the same time. I'm nearly behind the thunderbird while it's fighting my husband, and it's going to shift its attention back to me the moment my spells hit.
That's why I conjure a [Stone Spear], the bird believing it already knows my repertoire of spells. It knows it can mostly tank the bolts, and that the arrows aren't as accurate as I'd like them to be. As far as the thunderbird is concerned, I'm only a threat after five or six spells connect in a row. Because of that, it's determined it's okay to constantly shift its attention between us.
My spear gives me the benefits of both of the spells I've cast against this beast so far. It carries an immense amount of force with impacts, but has a piercing strike. I'm also skilled enough that I can manipulate it around the battlefield, so I don't need to simply shoot it after casting.
I send the spear at the thunderbird, striking it in its flank. The head of the spear pierces almost all the way into the bird, which lets out an ear-piercing shriek of pain. It whips its head around to face me as I pull the spear out using my magic, then tries to dodge my attempt at slicing off one of its wings using the spear.
"Jeez," I mutter.
My casting skills really got messed up by my death. Before I died, the first attack with the spear would have sliced into the wing, just as I had intended. I'm sure a couple of weeks is all I'll need to shape back up to my old casting skills, even if I'm not at the same power as I was before, but this is frustrating.
Fortunately, I'm not an idiot who thinks he can solo everything on his own. There's a reason Kyron and I work well together, and the moment the thunderbird dodges my [Stone Spear], it flies right into the path of the four successive [Stone Arc]s Kyron sent its way. The beast lets out another screech of pain, then finds my spear slashing into one of its wings.
We don't let up this attack, the thunderbird no longer able to keep up with us now that we've landed decent hits on its wings. Soon, Kyron and I have managed to bring the beast down to the ground, and he finishes it off with a beheading.
+23.68% Experience!
That much Experience from one – even for Mythical-Tiers like Kyron and me – is proof of how tough that battle was for us. If I was only a few Magic stronger, I could have been using the spears from the start. As they are, they wouldn't have been able to effectively pierce through the concussive blasts, finding themselves destroyed by the bird's own attacks.
[Stone Bomb] wouldn't have been a bad idea, except the stone shards it emitted wouldn't have done anything unless I hit it from close-range, and the bird would have focused on me while moving to keep us both on the same side of it after the very first one. All [Stone Bomb]s after that would have been ineffective, as the beast would use its concussive air blasts would have destroyed the shards before they ever reached it.
"Jeez!" Kyron exclaim as he collects the beast's loot once it finishes fading. "That was aggravating! I'm glad we don't have to fight those too often."
"Yeah," I say. "That battle took up a significant chunk of my Mana reserves."
"Same here," he says. "Is it me, or is the scaling start to hit rapid?"
There comes a point in the test runs of Specialty Dungeons where the power growth of monsters starts increasing faster. It varies from Dungeon to Dungeon, and I didn't expect it to happen until after we were in the fire zone. While a god can influence a Dungeon's spawn, and whether or not it's a Specialty Dungeon or a normal one, they can't influence the design of it or how it works.
"It's just you," I answer as I approach him. "We're just not used to being weaker than thunderbirds anymore. Those things were always a pain in the ass, and I had to kill some before I gained the affinities for earth and air, too. Imagine how that fight went."
Kyron gives me an impressed look.
"That was when you were still a Minor-Tier, wasn't it?" He asks, and I nod. "One of these days, you and I are going to sit down, and you're going to tell me all about those adventures you had before we met. Some of them are probably legends now, so it'll be easier to hear about them just keep an ear out, but I'd like to hear them from you, too."
"Maybe," I shrug. "Or maybe I'll just let you wonder the truth behind the myths. Let's rest here and recover some of our Mana."
The thunderbird was the only monster for this island, so we don't have to worry about taking out anything else until we leave it. Kyron and I decide to rest for about twenty minutes, then we get up and continue on our way.
Due to how frustrating the thunderbirds are to fight, we decide to avoid them after the fourth one. The loot and Experience just isn't worth it for us right now. The fights against them take too long, and we can make more progress in advancing the Dungeon's difficulty by fighting more but weaker monsters. We also spend more Mana against the thunderbirds than the other monsters in relation to how much Experience we gain.
Avoiding the thunderbirds is rather easy, as we can see them on their islands, and they don't attack until we actually land on them. All we need to do to avoid fighting one is just find another route around the island.
Soon, the end of this area is in sight – we can see air elementals floating around. Unlike air magics, air elementals are made up of pure air, which would render them invisible to the naked eye. Instead, they're made of up a clear, almost crystal-like material – much like the tusks of the boars for this zone. The crystals are of various shapes, most of them rounded, and shift and float around in groups. It creates a mesmerizing, almost pulsing form for the elementals that gives off a gentle and passive appearance, but the monsters are anything akin to gentle.
Much like the tusks of the boars, the crystallized air making up the bodies of an air elemental are surrounded by quick-moving winds. Any attack against one of those monsters needs to be durable enough and fast enough to withstand and pierce those – especially since some of them are actually razor-sharp blades.
Which are more damaging to any attacks – including punches – that draw close.
Since the air elementals are made up of several dozen pieces of crystallized air that floats, they can also shift their bodies enough to avoid attacks. That adds an extra layer of difficulty to them, just as with the water elementals.
Those are just their defensive and avoidance abilities innate to them. Air elementals are fond of using [Air Arrow] and [Air Bomb], often use [Air Bolt] if their opponent proves resilient to piercing magics, and in rare variants, can bend the air to turn invisible.
"Since we can't just overpower these," Kyron says as we land on the edge of an island with the first one we've come across. "And we have the void to consider, how do we do this fight?"
Our normal strategy when facing these before our death was simple overpowering. It was rare for us to come across a monster outside of a Dungeon which we couldn't deal with, and elementals are actually a rare Dungeon monster, even in Dungeons that focus on an element.
That meant that before our deaths, I could just lob a [Stone Bomb] at one and it would die. Its defenses wouldn't be strong enough to destroy the stone shards created by the bomb spell, which would be strong enough to break its body.
"Remember," I say. "The central piece – the sphere at its very center – is its core. That's all we need to destroy. Focus on [Stone Arc]s and don't get too close. Keep distance from it, and if goes to cast an [Air Bomb], you'll know because it's going to spin those shards that are somewhat cylindrical with cone-like tops."
"I… didn't know that," he says. "About the sign for the [Air Bomb]s."
"I think it's necessary," I say. "It takes them a few seconds, and all of those tend to spin around it while they cast it. Destroying those also weakens the bombs, and you destroy all of them, it can't cast them anymore."
"That would have be useful to know awhile ago."
In the five years of us traveling together, we never actually fought an air elemental together. The few times one of us encountered one after we met, we fought them alone. There were times we ran a Dungeon alone just to test ourselves, and other times, we parted ways temporarily.
"And the core?" He asks. "In my solo fights against air elementals, I always just broke enough of its crystallized air until it died. That seems like a better fight than trying to hit the tiny little part."
"It's all we need to destroy for a simpler kill," I say. "But you're right – it's easier to deal with if we break enough of its crystallized air. I've enough Mana to cast a spell you've never seen me use before, and at our current match-up against the elemental, it should still work. If done properly, it will destroy the core. If I mess it up due to not being used to doing it with so little Magic and the current state of my casting skills due to having died just hours ago, it should destroy enough of the elemental's crystallized air to kill it."
"…how long is the casting time for it?" Kyron asks.
"With my casting skills before death?" I ask. "Fourteen seconds. You know me – I like shorter, faster casts. That's why you've never seen me cast it. I really only ever use it from an ambush. With my current casting skills in disarray due to my death… probably half a minute or more."
"And the elemental is going to try to target you the moment it realizes what you're casting, isn't it?"
"They tend to do that if someone is casting a single spell for too long, anyway," I say. "But yes, the moment it realizes what I'm going to cast, it's going to do everything in its power to disrupt the spell. Due to the complexity of this spell and my current casting ability, I won't be able to dodge or evade very well unless I want to start over – and I'll lose all of the Mana spent making it."
"I'll do my best to keep it off your back," Kyron says.
I nod, then Kyron heads forward to begin attacking, using [Stone Arc]s like I told him to do. He draws its attention and focuses on keeping it while maintaining enough distance to avoid most of the monster's attacks, and I wait about ten seconds before I begin casting.
I hold my hands close together, a stone sphere only a quarter of an inch in diameter forming between my palms. As it grows in size, I pull my hands apart some, the stone sphere beginning to shift its form a little. Spikes begin to form over its surface as it expands in size, then they smooth out and it shifts to a cube.
As it reaches a full inch across, the conjured stone shifts to an eight-sided form, spikes forming over its surface again. It continues to change shape and form and lose its spikes. After it expands past the two-inch mark, it begins to lose its inside, the stone shifting to create a cage-like formation with twenty sides.
The spell continues to shift and change in shape, eventually returning to a spherical form made of up rings of thin stone rings, once it's six inches in diameter. The rings intersect each other in many places. Where they do, thin stone bars stretch from there to another intersection. Small stone thorns begin to protrude from those bars and on the inside of the stone sphere.
I push my hands together, and the creation shrinks down to only an inch in diameter – and back to a normal sphere.
[Cage of Stony Thorns] learned!
"Done!" I call out.
"About time!" Kyron exclaims as he stops a [Stone Bomb] from reaching me. "That was almost a minute of casting!"
"Sorry, and move!"
Kyron utilizes [Air Manipulation] to jerk himself away from the monster, and I launch the spell at it. While I'm sure the air elemental has sent an [Air Bolt] to try and intercept it, the spell isn't capable enough to do that.
My [Cage of Stony Thorn]s reaches the beast and bursts, quickly forming a larger version of its pre-shrink self around the monster. This one only has seven bars within it, and all seven of them are piercing the monster's core straight through it. The thorns on them have broken or cracked others.
+13.78% Experience! You have reached Level 18! Increases have been applied.
The monster disappears in the manner of Dungeon monsters, dropping a few items as it does.
"…what the heck did you design that spell to kill?" Kyron asks. "Because I really doubt you intended to fight an elemental with it, considering the casting time."
"I developed a fire version of it to take care of a pesky ice knight I met when I was thirteen," I tell him. "But ultimately scrapped doing that because there wasn't any way I'd get him in an ambush, he was too observant for that."
"So how did you deal with him?"
"I decided to ignore him," I say.
"Ah," Kyron freezes mid-reach for the loot. "Hey! You were going to kill me?"
"Yeah, but your cute face saved you."
Kyron just groans in response to that.
"Let's rest up a little bit," I tell him. "Then let's kill three or four more of those before heading back to the entrance."
"Alright," he says. "And while we're resting there, you and I are going to discuss all of the ways you came up with to kill me back when we first met."
"That would take a few days."
"…how many ways involved dragons?"
"Eighty-four!"